My experience was that mid-level management facilitated work, recognized talents, made internal resources (people, access, systems) available, recognized contributions, and was very understanding and flexible with work/life situations. On-site cafeteria is good, and the gym access was also a very nice plus. Scale of IT systems operations (nodes, geographic distribution, size of individual systems, complexity of the farm as a whole) is pretty cool from a challenge perspective.

Cons

I left during a general RIF which also saw termination of most of the executive suite. At upper levels of management, corporate direction was wanting and the company's position relative to competitors was slightly unfavorable on the market. There's a solid base of customers, but growth is limited (there's also a limited amount of growth within the EDA market as a whole). There's also a 20+ year tech legacy, which makes systems somewhat less than cutting edge, and the company lags in adopting new (especially Open Source) technology. At the time the company shed much long-lived talent as well, to its detriment.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Figure out what your overall growth prospects are and plan accordingly. You're a mature company in a limited market. Continue to recognize and grow talent. Look to technology upgrades and updates, within the constraints of ensuring stability of existing systems.